DR- FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 9, 1 April 1927, Page 14

DR- FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

LET HIM STUB HIS OWN TOES

(Copyright 1921) ANE of the unpopular elements about being highly moral and good is that we try to make other people be good. Nobody objects to a man being as righteous as he would like to be; they object when that man tries to make others righteous. There is one thing dearer to the human soul than doing right; it is doing as it pleases. Regulating people and telling them not to do things may gratify our own vanity and secure immediate obedience, but it is a poor way to improve people. If you bring up little Willie according to al the rules of child breeding, if you keep him always carefully removed from temptation and preserve him, as it were, in syrup until he is twenty-one and then turn him loose, he will probably fall before some goo-goo-eyed charmer before he has gone around the block. He has everything except the one thing needful, and that is visceral stamina, if you get what I mean. The surest way to learn arid to grow in this world is to make your own mistakes and suffer the penalty of them. Only when we have erred and suffered for it do we learn thoroughly not to err. If you tell people how to go straight, some spirit of independence in them will lead them to violate your instructions. But if you leave people alone they will learn for themselves. This is what we mean when we say that experience is the best teacher. It is the best teacher, but sometimes, of course, it is very expensive. One of the things man finds out as he grows older is that the wisdom and caution for which he has paid so great a price in suffering and otherwise cannot be handed on to his son. People have to learn things for themselves in the bitter school of experience. The trouble with correcting. people is that it is liable to destroy more than it builds up. t The constant habit of criticising and fault-finding is fata’ to love. If. therefore, you value the affection of anyone it is always best to treat bini with appreciation, not criticism. The only sure road to righteous conduct is to grow a force within ourselves that shall make us righteous. A force super-imposed upon us by someone else is only temporarily effective. This is why democracy is better for a people than any autocracy. They stumble forward making their ow n mistakes. These are mistakes, perhaps, they would not have made if an autocrat ruled them, but they learn better from them than they learn from the errors committed by an autocrat. Let the people stub their own toes, burn their own fingers, and bump their own noses. More is lost than is gained by too much regulation. To- morrow—Work.